Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is one of the most common endocrine system malignancies. However, the mechanism of tumor development is unclear. microRNA-129-5p is a microRNA that plays an important role in the development of tumors. The main purpose of our article is to find the potential target genes of microRNA-129 and their pathways based on gene array, sequencing and bioinformatics studies. We obtained microRNA-129 expression and clinical associations in the TCGA database. In addition, we found a microRNA-129-related chip GSE19933, which is overexpressing microR-129-5p in thyroid cancer cell lines. The down-regulated gene is considered to be a potential target gene for microRNA-129. The target genes were predicted through 12 online tools. We performed Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis of all down-regulated and predicted target genes. Furthermore, protein-protein interactions (PPI) were also analyzed for all potential genes. Finally, with intersecting down-regulated genes by overexpressed microRNA-129 and predicted target genes, the 889 genes are mainly enriched in the calcium signaling pathway, cGMP-PKG signaling pathway, ErbB signaling pathway and Proteoglycans in cancer, etc. The role of ten hub genes is particularly prominent in PPI analysis. These genes are differentially expressed in the thyroid by immunohistochemistry. We confirmed that microRNA-129 may play a major role in PTC through the above pathways, but more experiments are still needed to prove our results.
Keywords: TCGA; microRNA-129; papillary thyroid carcinoma; signaling pathways; target gene.
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